Примењена лингвистика у част Ранку Бугарском - Језик у

JEZIK U UPOTREBI / LANGUAGE IN USE
and covers several speech acts. It is especially frequent as a preparatory act for
requests. Our assumption is that requests are a speech act that constitutes a higher
degree of FTA than apologies even in those cases when power and relative social
distance are not an issue. We have already hypothesised (Perović, 2008) that
the apology phrase in Montenegro – through its richly elaborated IFID, which
includes downtoners, diminishers and intensifiers – resembles English requests
more than English apologies. If we look at the following examples we will see
that the “sorry-based unit of speech” is regularly used for petty requests and serious
pleas, but also for a variety of other speech acts which by definition carry
higher FTA than apologies. In a word, an apology is not always an apology.
(4) Sorry, forgive me, would you be so kind as to lend me your pen?
(5) I apologise, could you lend me 100?
(6) Hey, sorry, can you give my car a push? It’s stopped for some reason.
Apologising can also be a preparatory act for directives, often signalled by but.
This is a preparatory but.
(7) Sorry, step over there (please).
(Izvini, (ali) stani tamo.)
They can also be used to attract attention, after which a request follows:
(8) Excuse me, what’s that you’ve got over there on the shelf?
(9) Excuse me, could you pass me that magazine?
Also for a prohibitive:
(10) Excuse me, no smoking here.
However, high conventionalisation of the second speech act, i.e. prohibitives,
conceals its true prohibitory nature. This please reinforces that very purpose,
the prohibitive is in its linguistic form far from imperative but it is nevertheless
used in that function. It can also be a different speech act, for instance,
thanking. An example of the ritualistic use of apologetic behaviour is found in
Japanese. We quote Coulmas: “(...) in many contexts requiring expression of
gratitude in Western cultures, such as upon receiving a gift, Japanese requires an
apologetic formula such as ‘sumimasen’” (Coulmas, 1981: 84).
The function which Coulmas attributes to the cited ritualistic apologies in
Japanese coincides with the functional attributes of Excuse me, as described by
Borkin and Reinhart. They describe them as “the speaker’s willingness to con-
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